Controlling oscillatory instabilities is very important in many devices that are being used in various fields because such oscillations lead to a decreased performance and reduced lifetime of such devices. In devices such as combustors that are used in gas turbines, jet engines, and industrial processing devices such as furnaces and burners, controlling and avoiding the oscillatory instability remains a challenging task as these devices are driven by a variety of flow and combustion processes. Further, in these devices, oscillatory instabilities may arise easily as only a small fraction of the energy available to the system is sufficient to drive such instabilities and the corresponding attenuation in the device is weak. Hence, large amplitude pressure oscillations are easily established in these devices resulting in performance losses, reduced operational range and structural degradation due to increased heat transfer. Further, detection of the onset of oscillatory instabilities remains a challenging task in other fields as well; for example, flow induced vibrations due to aeroelastic instabilities and pipe tones arising due to aero acoustic instabilities.
Researchers have proposed various techniques to control oscillatory instabilities occurring in practical systems such as combustors and turbo machinery, some of which are listed below. In one of the proposed techniques, a delay feedback controller is used with the combustors. The delay feedback controller modifies the pressure in the fuel line to control instabilities. Although, the technique of using delay feedback controller is partially successful in controlling instabilities in combustors, it should be noted that this technique may not be amenable to most fielded systems as it requires external actuators, modification of combustor configuration and knowledge of frequency response for an arbitrary input. Further, the instability can be controlled only after the instability occurs and thus the technique fails to prevent the instability.
In another conventional technique, the combustor stability is determined based on the bandwidth of the combustor casing vibration and dynamic pressure measurements in combustion chambers. The bandwidth which is indicative of the damping, decreases towards zero as the combustors approach the stability limits. However, the presence of noise in the combustion chamber could make this technique partially inefficient, as it relies on frequency domain analysis.
In yet another conventional technique, the stability margin of combustors is determined using exhaust flow and fuel injection rate modulation. However, this technique is again restricted by the need for acoustic drivers and pulsed fuel injectors. Another conventional technique proposed a detector that utilizes autocorrelation of the acquired signal to characterize the damping of the combustor. The instability of the combustor is tracked by the detector when the damping goes to zero. This technique again requires the combustor to reach instability for the detector to work. Further, the technique may not be effective for combustors exhibiting pulsed instabilities and noise induced transition to instability. In addition, the presence of multiple frequencies in the spectrum makes the concept of damping unclear.
In order to avoid combustion instabilities, combustor designers incorporate sufficient stability margin in the design of the combustor. The stability margins prevent instabilities from occurring even in the worst possible scenario. However, such conservative estimates on operational regimes lead to increased levels of NOx emissions making it more difficult to meet the demanding emission norms.
In yet another conventional technique, aerodynamic and aeromechanical instabilities in turbofan engines are detected using a sensor positioned in the compressor portion of the engine which generates a precursor signal to instability after passing through a carefully selected bandpass and filter. This approach to detect instability is problematic due to similar issues discussed in the previous systems.
Thus, the conventional techniques for controlling the oscillatory instabilities require either incorporation of certain design features in the device or the incorporation of sensors or similar detectors that could detect the instability and control the instability. Further, both the processes are directed to identifying the instability after the instability occurs. Hence, there exists a need for a system and a method that could predetermine the instability and control various parameters of the device accordingly, to prevent the system from entering an operational regime where it becomes unstable, thus improving the stability margins.